App connects students to best schools

Farah Mulji is co-founder of a platform giving those who want to advance their studies a one-stop avenue to find a facility that best suits their needs

Farah Mulji, co-founder and CEO of Educartis, an online platform connecting learners with higher and continuing education providers was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, but she always had an interesting connection to Africa. Both her parents are of African descent. Farah’s mother is from Tanzania and her father from Uganda. Despite the connection, Farah found her way to Africa through a strategic consulting job and her love for education.

Having completed an undergraduate degree in business in 2005, and masters in business administration at the University of Toronto, Farah worked for six years with Deloitte as a consultant. Through her work experience, Farah had the opportunity of working in India, Canada, and the US. Soon after, She went on to do her Masters in Business Administration (MBA) – Management, Strategy and Entrepreneurship in INSEAD business school, where she had the opportunity to spend time in Singapore and France.

In 2010, Farah came to Africa for the first time. She was doing a strategicconsulting job for Aga Khan Hospital in Kenya. This was her first entry to Africa and she has been living on the continent since. Farah has been in Angola for about five years and has worked in different industries, including consulting, private equity and now tech while still living there.

Although Farah never studied technology and education, the idea just grew on her. She was, especially fascinated to see how technology was changing people’s lives in Africa.

At the time, she was looking for a project management profession course. “I remember I was in Angola when I started thinking, how was I going to find that course in that country. I went online and Educartis, the beta version of it popped up; I went in, was able to look for the information I wanted and the institution contacted me,” she recalls.

A year later, in 2016, Farah had just had her daughter and was at her own inflection point, when she headed to the Web Summit; one of the largest web conferences held each year. At that point, she started to consciously connect to other people in tech.

At the summit, she met the founders of Educartis. At the time, they were discussing ideas and that is where the magic of Educartis happened.

Farah’s co-founders had an idea and they already had the beta form of the product. “My co-founders needed leadership, they wanted someone to run with it and help evolve the idea into a healthy product and I was up to the challenge,” Farah says. With her background in management consulting and business development, Farah took up the Challenge and has since been with Educartis for about 16 months now. Educartis is an online platform connecting learners with higher and continuing education providers. Currently present in nine countries —Angola, Cameroon, DR Congo, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia.

Educartis is currently the leading education content platform in Africa. It offers free information on close to 3,000 education providers and over 22,000 courses. As Farah explains, Educartis is a two-sided platform that supports learners and education institutions. For learners, the value is that they get to search for information about courses and programmes.